Guest blog: Hello 2022 and Code Red, Climate Friendly Travel
Guest blog by Geoffrey Lipman - Present UNx Malta and former Assistant Secretary General of the UN World Trade Organization
Goodbye 2021 Despite the permanent drama of an
intensifying Pandemic, 2021 also underscored the magnitude of our creeping,
existential global Climate Crisis. Weather
extremes decimated communities on all continents - crazy floods in Europe and
Canada: massive forest fires in the US and Australia: droughts in Africa: Typhoons
in the Pacific and Atlantic. And growing numbers of Climate refugees around the
world.
COP 26, in November kept Climate on the public agenda. We saw a Glasgow
Tourism Declaration & at SUNx we unveiled a Code
Red, Plan for our Kids, calling for our
sector to go further, faster. It argues for 50% less carbon emissions by 2030: and
absolute Zero Greenhouse Gas (GHG) by 2050; including the more potent methane, sulphur and
nitrous compounds. And it’s absolute zero not some vague “net,” kick the can
down the 2050 Road.
It comes with a UN linked REGISTRY for SDG/Climate plans of
Tourism companies & Communities; SDG 17 Partners for support services; trained
graduate Strong Climate Champions to help navigate the transformation terrain
and a distinct eco badge for travellers
We took this high ambition approach, not to be alarmists but based on science,
weather & young climate activists’ reality checks. According to the IEA,
despite the massive economic slowdown in 2019 global GHG emissions are still
increasing by some 5% a year. We already hit 1.2o of our Paris
target after only 5 years. We are headed towards 3o at this rate –
which is inhospitable for human and animal life. And this, without any “feedback
loops”, like splitting of major Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets and associated,
dramatic sea level rises
Hello 2022. We will continue to ring our Code
Red Alarm Bell for COP 27 in Egypt in November. An African COP where so
many of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDC’s) are located and where young
people make up 60% of the population. To quote Greta Thunberg, “These are the
ones who will have to clean up our mess”
To help the Least Developed Countries, generally, we are proposing the
establishment of a new Strong Climate Friendly Travel Facility, to support Tourism SMEs in the world’s poorest countries. And
specifically to help them build Climate Disaster Resilience, while reducing
their Green House Gas Emissions in a Paris 1.5 scenario.
These Base of the Pyramid States, are places where tourism, is a
common socio-economic asset. And for them, Tourism is a great product - it
doesn’t need export licences; the market comes to the producer: promotion is
easy, especially in the Metaverse:: and LDC’s have some of the least spoiled, nature-based
tourism opportunities.
Yet Tourism also has a stark vulnerability, that COVID exposed, as
borders closed & lockdown decimated travel. For a sector which drives some
10% of the global economy, trade and jobs – up to 50% in many small developing states
- the market dried up overnight. SMEs,
who form some 80% of the Tourism Supply Chain, were particularly badly hit.
They have few resources to fall back on or insurance cover. They have a
priority need for emergency financial relief in the case of systemic natural
disasters - such as health, extreme weather, biodiversity collapse etc. –
because of the knock-on effect of travel disruption across national and
international socio-economic structures. These realities are valid in
all countries, & particularly impactful in the 46 LDC’s
We have named the proposed Facility after our inspirational co-founder the
late Maurice Strong, one of the fathers of sustainability and climate activism;
as well as an early architect of the UN SDG and Paris 1.5 response system. Strong
identified LDCs wellbeing, as a special component of the two Earth Summits he organized
in Stockholm in 1972 and Rio in 1992.
We see the Strong CFT Facility
as an innovative “mixed fund” with both financial & in-kind
components, sourced from public & private players in
Tourism, Finance & Insurance communities, with special focus on Impact Investment.
It can incorporate Government Green Bonds and even Traveller carbon offset
funding. It’s certainly not meant to replace traditional government emergency
response funding, but rather to complement it and demonstrate that the sector
can itself prepare for a tough future in a positive way.
We propose to launch during COP 27, and to spend the year leading up to
the COP building its structure with stakeholder input, and looking to gain
widespread support for the initiative from inside & outside the Travel
& Tourism world.
At SUNx Malta we will kick-start it, by offering 150,000-euro worth of Free
Scholarships to a graduate student from each of the 46 LDC’s for our 2022
Climate Friendly Travel Diploma. We are grateful to Malta's Ministry of Tourism
and its Tourism Authority, as well as our academic partner ITS (Institute of
Tourism Studies) for making this possible. The Diploma trains young graduates
to become Climate Friendly Travel Activists to help build national support foundations,
to take advantage of the CFT REGISTRY
for Resilience, and our curated Library of good practice tools & research.
Furthermore we will extend the role of the Climate Friendly Travel REGISTRY,
to offer special free support for those companies and communities in the 46
LDC’s who sign up to help develop sustainability and climate resilience plans.
We also welcome engagement from Organizations signing the Glasgow Declaration
as a means to track delivery on their ambitions
Finally, on reflecting on the opportunity presented by COP 27, particularly
at this time of the year, it brings to mind the biblical story of Joseph who as
Advisor to the Pharaoh, proposed the storing of grain in good years to cover
the years when the Nile failed to flood and there was famine across the land of
Egypt. Perhaps the first recorded example of the Precautionary Principle. And
surely there is no more relevant place than an Egypt COP, for a such a Base of
the Pyramid focused innovation.
Comments
Post a Comment